How much does a forum cost to build and run?

[WHARTY]

Hi

I am thinking of starting my own forum. Nothing to do with business.

I was wondering how much a forum like this would cost to make and run?

And also, how can you make money from it if it is free to use apart from advertising and some sort of subscription?

Advice or info would be kindley appreciated.

Lee

 

[Logistika]

Hi

I am thinking of starting my own forum. Nothing to do with business.

I was wondering how much a forum like this would cost to make and run?

And also, how can you make money from it if it is free to use apart from advertising and some sort of subscription?

Advice or info would be kindley appreciated.

Lee

There are no cost & open source forums available such as PHPBB & Simple Machines, and there are commercial ones such as vbulletin that UKBF uses. The three costs are:

1. if free forums - nil, if commercial then the licence whether annual or one off.

2. the cost of setting it up, as in skinning it to look like your subject matter, and in tailoring its options to your needs. eg. if a gaming forum, you wouldnt want the boring ukbf blue colour, but perhaps a green xbox colour with grand theft auto characters as the main icons, and the forum headings to reflect its subject matter. If you play about with it yourself, then there is no cost per se, but plenty of web designers will do the job for you for a reasonable fee.

3. running costs are generally only the costs of hosting the domain, however depending on the hosting environment, and the frequency of user uploads and downloads, the bandwidth costs may increase. e.g. on here, nooone posts attachments/files in their posts, but in some sites, people post in 5MB graphics for others to download. Every time someone downloads this, costs the host bandwidht space, and if you exceed your monthly quota, it can get expensive.

All depends on the subject matter of the forum.

Personally, I would suggest using a free forum to make sure the site gets decent following, and if it does then reconsider your platform.

 

[WHARTY]

Thanks Logistika.

Thats very helpful. Could you suggest any good sites where i could get a free forum?

Also do you have a rough idea of how much the commercial licence would cost and where i would get it?

Thanks

Lee

 

[oldeagleeye]

If you already have a hosting provider look to see if they offer Fantasico as part of the package. There are dozens of one click installs including blogs wordpress - joomla etc and most of the free forums. A commercial licence is just an upgrade same sotware.

If you don't have hosting find a company that does offer fantastico. That 1 click install makes everything so so easy - even to change themes and you will still end up paying less than £20 quid a year.

Rob.

BTW. Don't expect to make any money by selling advertisng. It ain't going to happen.

 

[WHARTY]

Ok thanks oldeagleeye. Why wouldn't i make any money though? doesn't this forum make money from advertising?

Lee

 

[matth]

I run a forum for some friends of mine... I've made £20 through my adwords account in just over a year

Still, it's added onto my hosting package that I pay for anyway, so it's not a major problem

 

[oldeagleeye]

I don't mean it unkindly OP but your hardly in Sifts league are you.

It has taken the company years of hard work and commitment to get to this stage where UKBF has become the biggest business forum in the UK with over 70,000 members. Probably about 500,000 casual visitors a week and almost 2 million posts. I repeat years of trying to establish the forum and a huge investment..

Years I am sure when the company didn't make a penny profit from advertising revenue after expenses. In fact I wouldn't be surprised if even this year shows a decent ROI and therefore Sift still has to rely on volenteer Mods even now.

Great Expectations PiP old chap are one thing and it was a damned good story. Making money out of forum however is more Alice in Wonderland.

BTW. What's this proposed forums theme. where will members come from. There are already millions of forums out there catering from their members interests. You would need something pretty special to earn that £20 a year matth was talking about.

 

[WHARTY]

I don't mean it unkindly OP but your hardly in Sifts league are you.

It has taken the company years of hard work and commitment to get to this stage where UKBF has become the biggest business forum in the UK with over 70,000 members. Probably about 500,000 casual visitors a week and almost 2 million posts. I repeat years of trying to establish the forum and a huge investment..

Years I am sure when the company didn't make a penny profit from advertising revenue after expenses. In fact I wouldn't be surprised if even this year shows a decent ROI and therefore Sift still has to rely on volenteer Mods even now.

Great Expectations PiP old chap are one thing and it was a damned good story. Making money out of forum however is more Alice in Wonderland.

BTW. What's this proposed forums theme. where will members come from. There are already millions of forums out there catering from their members interests. You would need something pretty special to earn that £20 a year matth was talking about.

No problem, i didn't take it the wrong way.
I don't want to say what the theme is just yet, however i will let you know when its up and running and you can check it out yourself.

Found these to host for me http://www.vbulletinhosting.co.uk/ think this may do the job. Do you think they would throw in the templates with this?

Cheers

Lee

 

[DanHaynes]

As an example:

VBulletin Licence: £150
VBulletin Skin: £100
Hosting: £100pa
Advertising your forum: ?
Your time (admin and moderation)

So roughly £250 should set you up with a nice looking forum. As has been said before - making money out of a forum is not realistic

ps: The host you found (GlobalGold) I use, and can recommend

 

[Top Hat]

I believe sift paid six figures for this forum. It took years and much money to build the level of members it has now.

That's why I resent being asking to pay to stay. If it wasn't for original members posting good quality content sift would have had nothing to buy.

 

[oldeagleeye]

Negative on the host you list Lee. That is just one BB

Try this link below a fellow member that came across and a 3rd the price just under 3 quid a month. They have about 34 1 click instanls and a pretty good web site builder you could play around with too with 1000s of pretty good themes.

Wouildn't worry about the licences if I were you. I doubt you ever get your money back on a commercial licence.

Anyway. Heres the link. PM me if you don't want to reveal theme in open forum and I'll give you an honest opinion on whether your get advertising or not.

Rob
http://www.pickaweb.co.uk/web-hosting-starter.htm

 

[Page]

That's why I resent being asking to pay to stay.

eh - whats that all about ?

 

[oldeagleeye]

Dont take any notice of Top Hat Page.

He runs a company called Silly Jokes. Quite appropriate I think. Silly by name - silly nature & comments.

What might have been a bit more constructive is as I have said is if Sift took account of the many positive and serious in terms of time devoted too posts by contributers to this forum and offered them free full membership now that we are being bombarded by paid for advertising all the time.

At the moment however it is a silly billy world.

rob

 

[Eagle]

I don't mean it unkindly OP but your hardly in Sifts league are you.

It has taken the company years of hard work and commitment...

No, it took Ozzy years of hard work and commitment.

At the end of the day, Sift (a business) have to make money from UKBF - otherwise they might as well just shut the place down.

 

[oldeagleeye]

Not like you to split hairs Eagle. I wanted to make a point which I did simply. I did not want to confuse matters by giving a detailed history of how the forum got to this stage.

That would have led to more questions like how much did Ozzy sell it for. How big would the OP have to grow his forum to sell it on. All of which are irrelevant for a huge number of reasons inlcuding the OP is about 5 years too late in trying to jump on what was and is a hobby bandwagon for most forums anyway.

Enjoy the rest of the weekend foilks. Rob

 

[Eagle]

Fairynuff I guess but I'd still say at least try setting one up and see what happens. It's very dependant too, on the 'USP' of the forum.

 

[WHARTY]

Hi thanks for all the replys. My main question was how much to start my own forum so thanks for the answers. I am not really bothered about making money out of it as it would just be a hobby, however i wanted to know how i could make money if the opportunity was there.

Thanks

Lee

 

[titanlee]

My company hosts a great many forums, almost all of which are based on enthusiasts / clubs. I'm also a member on a number of forums which we don't host. I can tell you with 100% certainty that running a forum on the cheap just earns moans and groans from the members who don't appreciate the time and effort it takes on the admin side, nor the costs on the hosting side.

I would advise against free forum hosting. One forum I am on started up on this and soon grew to be quite popular. The forum is always dog slow and lacks decent functionality (like search), so the owners thought about moving it to a commercial host. Nope - the runners of the hosting want around £4k to provide a copy of the database. I don't blame the hosters, this is their business model - for every 100 forums they host for free, I guess one will grow big and pay the money to move elsewhere, effectively making it possible for the other 99 to have free hosting. But I wouldn't advise using a free forum host.

One very important thing - if you decide to use an off-the-shelf package like phpBB, remember to keep it updated at all times else you'll get it defaced. That goes for all popular opensource packages but its especially common on forums.

Revenues from forums are possible but generally just cover the costs. If the forum is regarding a niche, then finding companies who specialise in that and getting advertising is the usual way.

 

[GreatSEO]

A forum is only as good as the members and their input.

I started one 3 years ago now and we are only just breaking even in terms of the financial implications. If you take into account the amount of time it has taken to get it established well I am owed thousands.

There are so many ways of making money from it but first you need the member numbers and not FAKE ones. Too many forums use poster services and make up members or buy databases of members and add them to their own adding no value whatsoever. We have near 5000 members and we cut out posts back all of the time. In fact post count is very low because we prune them back every 6-8 weeks.

The reason that we do this is that we do get a lot of duplicate posts but it seems when we prune the threads are not duplcated as much which is a problem I have found with many forums I am a member of.

These 3 things are a good start -

Membership (but it needs to be for something special)
Advertising (make sure you have the traffic and can offer some sort of guarantee)
Emailing the members directly (not too often or the members hate it)

Hope they help

Dave

 

[Eagle]

It's definitely hard work but the reward is great. Especially when you have Zero spam. Not many forums can claim that.

 

[xinghu]

How about Simple Machines Forum? It is a free forum. Best thing to do though is get someone to design a theme so the site looks more professional and unique.

 

[Eagle]

Good idea. Don't mess them around though.

 

[eventdomain]

I think the problem here is ego, mixed with dreams and fun.

I ran a forum for 12 months, it was going to be a large addition to the publishing arm of my company - but when actually running it and maintaining, I could see massive problems.

Yes, running forums can be fun, making the posts and staring it all up IS quite exciting - giving birth to something you own - but the workload involved always far outweighs any fun factor. You will be hit by spam like you never seen before, and hit fast.

If still interested, then suggest the forum specialises in a sector, as you'll need this to be different and attract members - dont go with a general marketing/biz forum, there's way too many already. You need an edge.

Forget making money from forums, its impossible, its not what their about/for. You could try purchasing an established forum, where the owner is fed up with it, try it that way as you could get lucky and get a bargain.

But however you do it, this will take years of hard work to build it up.

 

[Eagle]

You will be hit by spam like you never seen before, and hit fast.

Not necessarily.

 

[xinghu]

Although I agree that you can't really make money directly through a forum. Forums could act as a very good marketing tool, but like what has been said here already, it needs to be built up. There are usually modules that can be downloaded and installed which can help prevent spam, although it is true spam is an issue. I think the main issue with a forum is the admin. It is incredibly time consuming to build up and maintain a forum.

 

[DanHaynes]

Can anyone point to a few strategies for minimising spam on a forum (using vBulletin) in my case?

You can alter the registration process to require the input of of a code via image verification or simply don't allow automatic verification (it becomes an admin process).

Is there anything else?

thanks

 

[Faevilangel]

you can restrict user email accounts e.g. block hotmail & gmail accounts, require email verification, plenty of mods also on the site

 

[Eagle]

Can anyone point to a few strategies for minimising spam on a forum (using vBulletin) in my case?

Manual verification/checking of every single account is the only way. 99.999999% successful in our case and our members love it.

 

[eventdomain]

Dont believe all the naff advice about no spam - its untrue. You WILL get spammed badly once 10 members sign-up or team up to tag-team post.

Suggest you begin with PHPBB, to test the spam waters, then you'll see what I mean by how it can get out of control - you'll see, you'll see hehe.

PHPBB is free though, so it wont break the bank, and its great to find out if owning a forum is for you. It will shock you just how much this eats into your life, dont say I didnt warn you

 

[Clinton]

Can anyone point to a few strategies for minimising spam on a forum (using vBulletin) in my case?

I use vBulletin for the forums in my signature. We have zero spam.

This is how we keep spam at bay.
1. All new users are put in a group with very limited privileges. They can't create a signature or alter their profiles. The first few posts do not go public till they are approved by a moderator.

2. We do not ban and do not issue infractions to new users. Make a spam post and the account is deleted with the post. Zero tolerance. If you didn't read the welcome email and the forum rules, that's your problem, not mine.

3. To move out of that "new user" user group a member has to have had the account for a certain period and made a certain number of non-fluff posts. Our definition of fluff is very strict for new members. You can read it here. The definition is that every new member post is fluff by default (unless it meets certain strict guidelines):

...is fluff ...unless it contains something new, is on topic and assists the discussion in the thread. You have to meet all three. Think of it this way: You're joining a group of friends having a chat in a thread. You need to come across as someone who wants to be part of that multi-way communication and who can contribute usefully to it.

4. Make a fluff post and you'll get a pre-worded PM about fluff, about demonstrating your worthiness to be part of the forum. Make another fluff post and your account gets killed.

5. As it's difficult for spammers, post count monkeys and others to accumulate enough sensible posts to acquire privileges like creating links and modifying their profile, they end up with zero posts. Once a month all accounts with zero posts are culled. So hundreds of spammers open accounts, yes, but their accounts don't last long.

It works very well and big forums like Sitepoint.com have been around to borrow ideas.

 

[Graemem]

As an example:

VBulletin Licence: £150
VBulletin Skin: £100
Hosting: £100pa
Advertising your forum: ?
Your time (admin and moderation)

So roughly £250 should set you up with a nice looking forum. As has been said before - making money out of a forum is not realistic

ps: The host you found (GlobalGold) I use, and can recommend

Or...

phpBB: free
phpBB theme: free
Hosting: free

Ok so free forum hosting is usually a bit pants, but you could buy some cheap hosting and a domain for about £20 a year which is pretty much nothing and still not pay anything for forum licence fees.

The majority of forums don't grow into anything, so spending money at the beginning seems silly to me. Download phpBB, install it, find a theme, customize it a bit and point a nice domain at it - It'll look about as good as if you'd paid £250 for a vBulletin licence anyway.

Then if you find you're getting members and the forums actually growing it's easy enough to upgrade/transfer everyone to a vBulletin forum.

 

[Eagle]

5. As it's difficult for spammers, post count monkeys and others to accumulate enough sensible posts to acquire privileges like creating links and modifying their profile, they end up with zero posts. Once a month all accounts with zero posts are culled. So hundreds of spammers open accounts, yes, but their accounts don't last long.

That's commendable action but I wouldn't recommend doing it for a growing forum. A great many people open 'sleeper accounts' in order to reserve their brand name and come back at a later date when the forum is thriving.

Someone who then comes back to start posting to find their account is deleted or, worse, their name has been taken is going to be mighty annoyed!

Best policy is to vet all accounts and don't let spammers in, in the first place.

 

[Clinton]

Eagle, not letting spammers in is not only highly ambitious, it's practically impossible. When someone signs up you don't know their intentions and an IP check against spambot or stopforumspam.com isn't a conclusive indication that they are there for the right reasons.

A great many people open 'sleeper accounts' in order to reserve their brand name and come back at a later date when the forum is thriving.

Someone who then comes back to start posting to find their account is deleted or, worse, their name has been taken is going to be mighty annoyed!

Tough titties.

I want users who've signed up for the right reason - to post. I don't need squatters!

A lot of forums allow this type of name hogging because it swells numbers and they take some sort of delight in how many members they have. I'm not interested in member numbers. I'm interested in posts and quality of posts. And especially for a new forum, that's what counts! (Mine is a new forum - it was set up in Jan this year)

Users with zero posts do get a boilerplate email three days before their account is deleted. At least two of my current regular posters have stated publicly that this email is what kicked them into action!

 

[amazestore]

This one tells me

There are no cost & open source forums available such as PHPBB & Simple Machines, and there are commercial ones such as vbulletin that UKBF uses. The three costs are:

1. if free forums - nil, if commercial then the licence whether annual or one off.

2. the cost of setting it up, as in skinning it to look like your subject matter, and in tailoring its options to your needs. eg. if a gaming forum, you wouldnt want the boring ukbf blue colour, but perhaps a green xbox colour with grand theft auto characters as the main icons, and the forum headings to reflect its subject matter. If you play about with it yourself, then there is no cost per se, but plenty of web designers will do the job for you for a reasonable fee.

3. running costs are generally only the costs of hosting the domain, however depending on the hosting environment, and the frequency of user uploads and downloads, the bandwidth costs may increase. e.g. on here, nooone posts attachments/files in their posts, but in some sites, people post in 5MB graphics for others to download. Every time someone downloads this, costs the host bandwidht space, and if you exceed your monthly quota, it can get expensive.

All depends on the subject matter of the forum.

Personally, I would suggest using a free forum to make sure the site gets decent following, and if it does then reconsider your platform.

 

[Stationery-Direct]

Our forum is solely for UK based members, hence all IP's not in the UK & Ireland automatically go to the moderation queue where they are deleted or manually approved in special cases.

We have NO spam as 99% of it is done by people employed to do this overseas.

If your forum is to open to the rest of the world then manually approving every account or ensuring you have a good bunch of moderators are the only way to stamp out spam effectively....forums are hard work!

 

[Eagle]

Our forum is solely for UK based members, hence all IP's not in the UK

Would be interested to know how that's done, if you don't mind? It'll further bolster our defences.

 

[Eagle]

Eagle, not letting spammers in is not only highly ambitious, it's practically impossible.

I haven't found that to be the case. Over 2000 have tried and we've let just one of them through in error in two years (current 'demonstration' aside).

Tough titties.

Well, an 'aggressive' policy obviously works for you.

A lot of forums allow this type of name hogging because it swells numbers and they take some sort of delight in how many members they have. I'm not interested in member numbers. I'm interested in posts and quality of posts.

We too.

 

[Clinton]

I haven't found that to be the case. Over 2000 have tried and we've let just one of them through in error in two years (current 'demonstration' aside).

How did you determine that none of your lurkers are spammers-in-waiting?

 

[Eagle]

How did you determine that none of your lurkers are spammers-in-waiting?

Accounts are checked every now and then. Besides, most who are accepted as members are proven networkers anyway with an established, traceable 'web history'. Spammers are fairly easy to spot (most have Eastern IP addresses, too) - so we don't allow them in the first place.

 

[Clinton]

Besides, most who are accepted as members are proven networkers anyway

That sounds a great way to go for a close to invitation-only model where you can see new members' web histories.